Improvements you want to WinSPMBT

Mustang · #1 January 13th, 2006, 01:51 PM

The game's great, and it's probably the most realisitc war sim out there. Still, being a video game, it falls short on some of the more important parts of war. In the past, it was hard to cram all this stuff into a game, but I think that the Steel Panthers series can, potentially, be a real battlefield simulation.

The equipment and morale stuff in WinSPMBT is good, IMO, but the game dosen't really represent the chaos of war at all. There needs to be something to represent that. How about there's a preference option that turns on or off the "fog of war". When the option's on, you won't be able to see the exact composition of enemy units, but only a rough estimate of their strength if they're well-hidden. For example, it's happened countless times in history that an attacker has come across a few, well-hidden infantry, been ambushed, and overestimated their size. You might be able to get an exact count of bigger weapons, like tanks, but in real life there's no way that you'd be able to spot every single infantryman firing at you like you do in WinSPMBT.

There also needs to be some kind of fatigue thing. Infantryman can dash 100-200 yards without getting too worn out, but in WinSPMBT it limits you to two hexes/turn for infantry movement. They should allow you to move faster than that, but it wears out your troops quicker. Fatigue reduces morale, effectiveness, speed, etc., and should also accrue when a unit has been in combat for too long. It's really a quite important thing, and I don't think it should have been left out.

Has anyone played the old Steel Panthers III? The "orders" function was a good idea. Each unit gets only so many orders per turn, and they regenerate at a random rate each turn. Orders are spent issuing some commands, like moving, but not the more commonsense commands like firing that a unit does on its own initiative. Not only does this orders function represent the different abilities of your unit commanders ( a less competent commander would be able to get less orders and get less things done), but, most importantly, it represents the Soviet-style lack of initiative in some armies (the Russian units tended to get less orders, representing the fact that a commander won't do anything on his own and has to wait for HQ to tell him exactly what to do).

I hope you don't see this as a complaint, because it's a great game. But it's some good food for thought if you ever want to make the game super-realistic. Factoring in psychological factors and the friction of war are hard to to in a game, but that dosen't mean we can't try.

Pyros · #2 January 13th, 2006, 06:20 PM

Hi,

Usually when a soldier enters a battle-zone he watch his every step.

In WinSPMBT, an infantry unit, when marching in a road, may travel up to 7 hexes (350 meters in one turn (5 minutes). If I am not wrong this is translated to 4,2 Km per hour, which represents a forced march for a fully equipped soldier.
Inside a forest a unit may travel 2 hexes per turn (100 meter per 5 minutes) because of two reasons. First he must bypass the obstacles and secondly he must advance in a very cautious way due to the fact that he doesn't really know if an enemy is hidden behind a tree!

Concerning the fatigue level, I will agree with you that this is something interesting in a battle but you must take into consideration that most of these battles last for 15-20 turns (75-100 minutes).

cheers,
Pyros

Mustang · #3 January 14th, 2006, 03:04 PM

I guess you're right about the fatigue thing. An infantryman can only dash 100 or so meters so it dosen't really make a difference to the game. Still, the ideas about "fog of war" and putting the orders concept back in place would help a lot.

Zipuli · #4 January 14th, 2006, 03:22 PM

"Usually when a soldier enters a battle-zone he watch his every step."

I think this has been always in the SP engine... In SP1-3 when unit was not spotted it moved at top speed (forced march). After being spotted (# or *?? appeared after the units name) they got careful and the speed was limited and after being fired upon the speed was dropped more.

Of course it was a bit stupid to know when you were spotted when you saw no enemies... That's propably the main reason the * and # marks are removed from SPMBT? But am I correct if I assume, that the mechanism still works in some level in SPMBT?

In SPWAW I think you still know when your units are seen?

Zip

Mustang · #5 January 15th, 2006, 07:10 PM

What do you think of the other ideas, though? Is there any way to represent the kind of ambigious information a commander always recieves? It might also be interesting if they put a time limit on multiplayer games, to make it more realistic. It'd be interesting.

narwan · #6 January 15th, 2006, 09:48 PM

A time limit does NOT make it more realistic. The usual reasoning for it goes something like "a real force commander has a limited amount of time to make decisions so why should a player have all the time he needs?" The answer is very simple, in reality every single commander in the force (so including every specific unit commander) and many of the other individuals in those units will add their 'brainwork' to the decisionmaking process and they'll be doing that all at the same time (i.e. during a turn).
As a player you're in effect playing every unit commander, not just the overall commander. So the available time should be close to the total amount available to all those unit commanders and that would be hours per turn.

Narwan

Alby · #7 January 16th, 2006, 03:07 PM

Make it playable online

Mustang · #8 January 17th, 2006, 12:07 AM

Narwan, I think it's crazy that you have to direct every single unit's fire. I've seen a lot of real-time command simulations where individual units do most of the menial tasks themselves. Of course, Shrapnel is only a very small company, and I'm told that the WinSPMBT code is based on the old Steel Panthers II engine (AKA thousands of lines of "C language spaghetti code" in the words of Mobhack). So it'd be great if it was playable online, etc., but it would take too much money for Shrapnel. I'm surprised, though, that noones come up with any mods or asked for a development kit for WinSPMBT.

narwan · #9 January 17th, 2006, 12:10 PM

It's either you directing all the units or leaving it up to the AI. There's little in between.
Of course you've seen real-time simulations where individual units do most of the menial tasks themselves, it's endemic to real-time for exactly the reasons I outlined. In real-time there is no time to let one single brain (the player) do all the necessary (and realistic) thinking that needs to done (and which in reality would be done by all the individuals involved separately and simultaneously). So in real-time simulations the AI has to kick in and take over a large part of that. With all the (unrealistic) consequences that brings along.
Steel Panthers has gone the other way. It gives a player maximum control by reducing the AI involvement to a minimum. It mimics realism by giving each unit sufficient 'brain'time.

But you shouldn't forget that these simulations are all exactly that: simulations. They model only part of reality and can only model part of it. Simulations always have abstractions that violate reality. Can't be helped. Both the realtime simulations and turn based simulations have their share of unavoidable unrealistic elements. And it's almost impossible to combine the two.

Narwan

Mustang · #10 January 17th, 2006, 12:32 PM

Still, computer AI has advanced enough for any game to let the smaller units do some thinking for themselves. There's great potential here, but it's too bad that no big company is picking up the idea of a really realistic battlefield simulation. They're the only ones that have the money to try.

But why hasn't anyone talked about my "orders" idea I mentioned in the first post? It's an interesting little concept that needs to be considered.

Quote:

Has anyone played the old Steel Panthers III? The "orders" function was a good idea. Each unit gets only so many orders per turn, and they regenerate at a random rate each turn. Orders are spent issuing some commands, like moving, but not the more commonsense commands like firing that a unit does on its own initiative. Not only does this orders function represent the different abilities of your unit commanders ( a less competent commander would be able to get less orders and get less things done), but, most importantly, it represents the Soviet-style lack of initiative in some armies (the Russian units tended to get less orders, representing the fact that a commander won't do anything on his own and has to wait for HQ to tell him exactly what to do).